Second: There’s a constitutional case for drone attacks, even when drones target U.S. citizens who have joined a terrorist cause abroad. President Bush’s counsel John Yoo (now a U. of California law professor) laid out the case in a recent Wall Street Journal article. He wrote: “U.S. citzenship doesn’t create a legal force field around Americans who treasonously join the enemy. During the Civil War, every Confederate soldier remained a U.S. citizen. In World War II, Americans joined the Axis. As the Supreme Court reaffirmed in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (2004), ‘Citizens who associate themselves with the military arm of the enemy government...are enemy belligerents.’”

Conservatives are trying to have it both ways. Sometimes they fault the President for being too “soft” on terrorism, sometimes they fault him for being being too aggressive — whichever criticism they think can use to score cheap political points quickly. — Dennis G. Dreyer, Princeton